Understanding Data Security Threats in Your District

As recent as a few years ago, cyber-security threats were not on the radar of most school district leaders.

That’s according to the sixth annual broadband and infrastructure report released by the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), a nonprofit made up of K-12 school technology leaders. An increasing number of district leaders are realizing the importance of bolstering their network security, the report found, and their budget priorities reflect as much.

“School districts, like every organization and person in the world, are concerned with keeping data private and secure,” Keith Krueger, CEO of CoSN, tells EdSurge. “It’s dramatically up from recent years.”

Based on responses from 386 U.S. school districts, more than one-third (36 percent) of districts spend 10 percent or more of their technology budgets on network security, and another third (31 percent) direct between 5 and 9 percent to security issues. These security funds are often spent on services such as breach detection and security vulnerability assessments.

As the necessity of data breach avoidance measures increase, so must the awareness to stay on top of this issue. Our district’s, students, employees, volunteers and others, all deserve the peace of mind that security measures offer.

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